“You’re Always Brighter”
Sunday, I was amazed to see and hear “You’re Always Brighter” in the group of songs featured as “Ric Ocasek and Benjamin Orr Demo Sessions, circa 1974” on YouTube. https://youtu.be/CVBg8MrpTsg?si=VXpXt0wSCAaNZ5x7
I happened upon the recording having searched for “Harlequin Richard and the Rabbits” via YouTube. I have a reel-to-reel copy of “Harlequin” and other songs and I was wondering if there were other recordings of it, so I went to the Tube. In the comments section someone asked who the singer is. I wrote, “Milton Randle is the singer.”
Milton Randle was the lead singer of Audience, a local Boston progressive rock group, aspiring to create Yes and Steely Dan influenced original songs. The group had to change its name from Audience, when it discovered another group already had that name. They chose Curfew Gull as their new moniker. The members of the group got to know Ric and Ben of Richard and the Rabbits when we played several outdoor gigs together. When Ric and Ben played at the Idler Cafe in Cambridge as Ocasek and Orr, their relationship with the Curfew Gull members deepened, because two of them worked there.
We were all hopefuls trying to make it in the music business. We were all in our 20s playing the part of aspiring musicians. None of us were lining them up around the block, which was always my assessment of how a group or musician was faring with the public. You didn’t, or I didn’t, want to give too much thought about what would happen if we didn’t make it. You either walked the talk or you didn’t. Ben and Ric, or Ric and Ben, walked the talk. As such, they were quite the pair. They seemed co-joined in an intriguing almost mysterious way as if they had something between them you didn’t have.
Ben, with his amiable personality and rockstar good looks, was always the focus of any performance of the two of them or with the band. If any of us had the goods to make it, Ben had it. Ric, with his lanky frame and face was their manager, promoter, leader and hanger-on. Hanger-on because he didn’t have any musical talent to speak of. He was a third rate singer at best. If they made it, it would be because of Ben’s musical talents, not his. That’s how it seemed…then. Rick had this slick, huckster like quality, which he brought to most of his interactions. They had some cred because of the Milkwood album. It was also clear they hadn’t gotten very far because of Milkwood. Nevertheless, they had recording studio experience and business connections the rest of us didn’t have.
“I wish I had written this song!“ Rick said to the middling to small audience after the two of them, Ocasek and Orr (as they billed themselves) played the Eagles’ “Best of My Love” at the Idler Cafe one evening. If you were hip, you didn’t sing the praises of the Eagles back then. There was/is this anti-commercial streak in many musicians and critics. Musicians and groups who actually had made it got/get put down by other musicians and critics. Making it represented selling out. Selling out what, I now ask? Your values? Your standards? Your integrity? I’m convinced there is a big streak of Envy in all that put down.
Ric was publicly declaring his desire to make it even if it was selling out. He took me aside that night and told me he was working on a song he wanted me to sing. “Sure,” I thought.
He played the song for me the following day. The lyrics were written out. I didn’t really connect with the song, but I connected with the idea of performing it, being in a studio, getting some recording experience. I had nothing to lose. Perhaps it might be an opportunity ultimately for Curfew Gull, I thought.
Jan, James, Sus and George of Curfew Gull thought they might be losing me with this offer by Ric. So, James accompanied me to the studio recording. Ric and the recording engineer obviously knew each other and had worked together. The recording engineer was like Ric: huckster-like, fast talking, superficial, slick. I put on the headphones, got a balance of the track and my voice, and started singing. I thought I was rehearsing the song for a first take. He recorded my one run through and that was it. I was sorely disappointed. I didn’t have time to work on it or get a feel for what I was doing, to embellish it, or even hear it back to see what embellishing it might have needed.
I was told the song played on the radio the next day. I was mortified.
I learned much later I was the victim of a certain type of ignorance. I was ignorant about my own knowledge of recording in a studio. I didn’t know then, as I know now, the recording studio was/is an artistic, creative environment. I just thought the recording studio was there to record what goes in. Not, as I have learned, to capture what was possible even to perfection, and to take the time to do so. And I was the victim of the ignorance of engineers, who seemed to value only the live take in the studio. Was that a particular value of Boston recording engineers at that time? This guy was not the only recording engineer I experienced in Boston who operated that way. When I read that Paul McCartney took months to achieve what he wanted with Oh! Darling, I realized I’d been had. Oh! Darling, Recorded: April 20 and 26, July 17, 18 and 22, August 11, 1969 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh!_Darling
Berry Gordy wrote about having the band play a song 50 plus takes before they got it right! Even “Like A Rolling Stone” took 20 takes!
When Tom Scholz’ Boston took its namesake town and the world by storm in 1976, I hope there were lots of Boston recording engineers who were rocked back on their heels at Scholz and the band’s pristine but rocking studio prowess. I don’t doubt that some Boston recording engineers derided the band’s production as inauthentic. Two years later by the time the Cars went into the studio to produce their masterful debut album, their studio prowess was already intact contributing to much of the success of the album and the band’s rise to prominence.
*****
Ultimately, of course, Curfew Gull did not work out. We broke up with Jan and Sus and me parting with James and George. We hooked up with Bob Benjamin and Andy Mendelson. That didn’t work out. I stopped working with Jan and Sus and started working with Andy and Bob and a new keyboard player, Greg Hawkes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Hawkes
(go figure!) That never took off. I returned to Vermont.
Ric and I stayed in touch via phone. I never understood why he stayed in touch with me. I welcomed being in contact with him. When I heard the song yesterday, I understood why he stayed in touch with me. The performance of the song was good! I was someone worth staying in touch with…until…
“Milton, I’ve been listening to Patti Smith. I can’t tell you what effect listening to her music has had on me!” I knew of Patti Smith. I hadn’t bought any of her albums, but I was tuned to the groundswell about her. There was a seriousness and an openness in his voice I hadn’t heard before. He sounded genuinely moved.
That was the last time I spoke to Ric.
Back in Vermont, I started working with my girlfriend, who was vice president of a counseling center in Burlington. I had decided to go back to school and get my PhD in education when the following took place… https://milton-randle.medium.com/my-zzebra-story-59dbc8d28e08
As lead singer of Zzebra, I, we, the world, started hearing about the Cars. Ric and Ben made it. They made it big. I still listen to their music quite regularly because I truly enjoy it, for what it represents: pop/rock music with a synthesized, digitized, forward leaning, art/rock, yet, rooted sensibility.
Rick Ocasek found his voice …big time. Patti Smith and the punk/new age music explosion of the times freed him to express himself on his own terms. He doesn’t sound like Patti Smith, (but if you knew him and how he sounded earlier you can understand how hearing Patti Smith opened up floodgates for him), he sounds like Ric Ocasek. I get goosebumps at times, recognizing he shared that with me. I’ve always acknowledged I never found my voice as a singer, as good of a vocalist as I might’ve been. Knowing someone who did find their voice the way Ric found his gives me a sense of satisfaction.
As good of a vocalist and as charismatic of a personality Ben Orr was (he sang their number one signature song, “Just What I Needed”), he never matched his partner’s unique and singular sound and voice. As the far weaker singer, Ric became the dominant voice and icon of the group, despite his vocalist shortcomings. His vocal personality became the signature sound of the group. How far would the Cars have gotten with Ben as the sole voice, like Roger Daltry with the Who? We will never know.
Ric gave me a copy of the reel to reel of “Harlequin” and other songs the last time I saw him in 1974 or 75, I can’t remember. It was the last time I saw him in person. I’ve had it all these years. I was hoping or expecting to run into them (Ben and or Ric) and reminisce sometime on the planet before the clock ran out.
MR
